Lord of the Vampires

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  I suppose I screamed; I must have screamed, though how loud and long I cannot say, for all fear fled and I knew only hysterical grief. And as I cried out, my breath stirred the dust in the coffin—truly her final resting-place now—causing it to scatter upward into the air and float like the white-hot ash of burning parchment.

  I breathed in that ash, choked on it, wept for it; indeed, I crawled into the coffin and clutched the bones, kissed them, baptised them with my tears.

  Sweet servant and friend! Loyal and unquestioning companion! I remember with pain each thoughtless act I ever committed against you, and know that now, I have failed in my obligation to protect you.…

  I did not mourn alone long; in the midst of my sobs, I felt a warm hand touch my shoulder. Above me stood Elisabeth, her own eyes aglisten with tears, her expression one of horrified shock and pity. She was naked, her hair in streaming tangles; apparently she had heard my wailing and hurled herself from bed.

  “Zsuzsanna, my darling!” Her voice was low, softer and more tender than ever I had heard it—oh, but I was too full of grief and fury to believe her. “My dear, what has happened? Oh, this cannot—is this poor Dunya?” At once she fell to her knees beside the coffin and swore: “Damn him! Damn him!”

  I whirled round and sat up at once, filled with an anger pure enough, grand enough, to consume the entire world. I cared not whether I offended her, or Vlad, or the Dark Lord, even if He be the Devil Himself; I cared not if in the next instant I, too, was reduced to a heap of bones and dust. I lashed out, wanting only for her to suffer as I suffered at that moment.

  “You know it is. You are the one who has killed her! I trusted you—trusted you, but now—”

  A flash of rage on her face, but only a flash; she controlled herself immediately and replied, with an expression of infinite hurt and sadness, “Zsuzsa, sweet Zsuzsa, how can you say this to me? How can you think that I would ever want to harm your friend and cause you such suffering? You are first in my heart, and I would never betray you.… This is all Vlad’s doing!”

  I would have none of it; all an act, all an act, one I had been foolish to believe. “You killed her, as you intend to kill me! I saw you perform the ritual; I saw Dunya’s hair, and mine, upon your altar. I saw the Dark Lord.…”

  At those last two words, her eyebrows lifted sharply, and her gaze became intense, ferocious, diamond-bright; she had not known. Then slowly, the golden brows lowered; her forehead smoothed and her entire expression grew composed. When at last she spoke, her words were measured and deliberate.

  “If you saw, then surely you understood the ritual’s purpose: to protect you and Dunya from harm. My darling, there is much I have not revealed for fear of frightening you. Vlad intends to destroy us all, and it has taken all my reserves of strength and wit simply to protect you. I admit, I have failed you in terms of Dunya, your good servant, whose death has clearly broken your heart. For my mistake has been to put especial protection round her whom I love most”—and here she kissed my hand, leaning down so that her hot tears spilled onto my flesh—“and to leave only a modicum for myself and Dunya.”

  What could I say to such a confession? I struggled onto my knees, inadvertently cracking dry, brittle bones, and reached for her. Sobbing, we embraced.

  “Ah, my Zsuzsanna, my Zsuzsa, I am sorry I misled you, but I did so out of concern that you should not be afraid. Vlad is weak, yes, and I am the more powerful—except that he has studied magic some two centuries longer than I. His father and grandfather both ascended the throne with the Dark Lord’s aid, and I believe he has invoked that powerful entity yet again in hopes of defeating us. For he fears us and anything, anyone, stronger than he—and that which he fears, he is bound to destroy. This is how he repays me, who have come to offer him help … and you, who remained his loyal companion for fifty years, despite his despicable treatment of you.”

  So gentle was her gaze, so wounded yet full of compassionate sorrow, that my heart was pierced by a fresh grief, that of the realisation I had hurt her unjustly. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” I murmured, with renewed weeping, and pressed harder against her warm ivory flesh, against the soft perfumed hair that cascaded like Godiva’s over her shoulder, breast, and belly. “I understand … you had invoked the Dark Lord for protection for us all. But you must have the same protection I have, for if I rise and find you so destroyed”—here I gestured at the pitiful heap of bones beneath me—“I truly will die of unhappiness. What shall I do to save you? Teach me, and I will bargain with the Devil Himself!”

  A hint of wryness crept into her expression, and she chided quickly beneath her breath, “Do not call Him the Devil, Zsuzsanna; that is so superstitious and mediaeval!” Immediately after, she straightened and said more loudly, “I will not have you bargaining with Him, dear one. It is too unsafe, even for those of us long practiced in the black arts. He is a treacherous negotiator, and He deals only in lives and afterlives; He would all too quickly possess your soul.”

  “My soul? What would He want with it, if He is not the Devil?”

  She lowered her eyelids and, in an obvious effort to distract me, said, “Come away from those bones, darling—it is too gruesome!” And she lifted me up by the waist as easily as if I had been a babe, and set me down beside her to brush away dust and bits of crumbled bone from my dressing-gown. Shattered, frightened, I clung to her as she led me out into the hallway and back towards the chamber we had come to share.

  But still I contemplated her odd statement about her Master; if He was not the Devil, was He then God? Surely God would not stoop to bargaining for souls! As sorrow had removed all my courteous restraint, I demanded again, “Why my soul?”

  “A matter of speech,” she said, but her gaze was focussed straight ahead, on her destination, rather than on me; I could not help feeling that she wished desperately to avoid the subject altogether, as if it were too unpleasant even to contemplate. “You would be absorbed. Annihilated. Devoured.”

  Is this what Vlad has done to Dunya? Has her soul been eaten by the Dark One with the loving eyes?

  Yet if that is what I felt in His presence—that ecstatic sense of No Thing and All Things—then I cannot, as Elisabeth does, fear Him. If that is where Dunya is, then I shall dry my still-streaming tears.…

  And yearn to join her.

  Elisabeth will not teach me any of the needed knowledge to contact Him directly—to seek revenge on Vlad, and safe passage for us both from this castle. But I will find Him.

  I will find Him.…

  29 JUNE. No entry in all this time; grief has caused my strength and inclination to wane. I think often of the dead: my good mother and father, my brothers Arkady and little Stefan, and dear Dunya. Sometimes I even think of all the poor souls whose bodies and bones lie corrupting in this castle and the vast encircling forest. So much death and suffering everywhere I turn! The magnitude of it over-whelms, permeates, my mind and heart.…

  But so many things have happened that I must record them before the details fade from memory. To-night, for the first time in months, my mind is directed towards something other than mortality—towards a distant land I have always yearned to see, but came to think I never would.

  A month or so ago, tsigani men drove their wagons into the castle courtyard and camped there. It was a warm day, and hotter still for the gypsies, as they had decided to cook their noonday meal—a kid—and so built a large fire and spit and sat round it half-naked, their bare chests and backs exposed and glistening with sweat.

  Their presence was resounding evidence (although I had never doubted) that Vlad did indeed mean to desert me here, for when Elisabeth and I tried to signal the group’s apparent leader from the windows, the men laughed derisively and ignored us—just as they ignored Mr. Harker, who also cried out from his window. (Obviously, he is just as much a prisoner as we; though certainly ignorant of dealing with gypsies. The fool threw them money—which of course they pocketed before turning away.)

  “Shut him
up!” Elisabeth ordered, her eyes narrowed in frustration at the smirking ruffians beneath us; like an obedient slave, I hurried at once up to Harker’s chambers and entranced him. When I returned, I found Elisabeth a feminine parody of the men; leaning seductively out the unfettered window, her gown and camisole both unfastened and pulled down to the waist, baring her breasts, she sang a patently bawdy song in Romany to the captivated onlookers below. My first reaction was to be slightly jealous at her brazen display in front of those vile, untrustworthy creatures; but the jealousy was swiftly replaced by humour at Elisabeth’s audacity, and the comically smitten expressions on the gypsy men’s faces. This was the first time since Dunya’s death that I had been graced by laughter, and that made it all the more powerful: I shut my mouth and bit my tongue in an effort to quell the chuckling that bubbled up within me, but all for naught. The laughter came regardless; thus I stood somewhat back from the window so that I could not be seen, but I could see both Elisabeth and her adoring audience.

  Her little performance achieved her intent; the tsigani chief immediately ran from his place in front of the camp-fire—shouting an order to the other men to remain—and arrived at the castle entrance. This was apparently bolted from the outside, for as we rushed to welcome him in, I heard the scrape of wood against metal, then the hollow clank of a wooden bolt striking stone.

  Although we were forced to remain inside, he had no difficulty crossing that threshold; like a lovestruck bull, he flung aside the heavy door and rushed straight for Elisabeth and her bared bosom. He grasped her breasts, one with each hand, and, with alarming disregard for civility, pushed her backward to the cold floor.

  To my astonishment, she did not resist (though she could easily have held her ground, causing him to fall back as though he had collided with a mountain). No, she fell back, laughing, and when he threw back her skirts and petticoats, she laughed harder still, as if it were all the most amusing sport, and let her bare legs sprawl wide.

  He was not an unhandsome man—in fact, his shining coal-coloured hair and strong beak of a nose reminded me somewhat of my brother—but there was a crudeness to his broad face and plump, barrel-chested body, and to his oily olive skin and ridiculously long waxed mustache that I found supremely distasteful.

  And when he quickly unfastened his trousers and fell atop her, piercing her, bellowing, still clutching her soft breasts with his thick, inelegant fingers, the whole scene struck me as nauseous, and I turned away, thinking to leave before I was called upon next.

  But at that moment, Elisabeth framed the tsigani’s face with her hands (so white and delicate in contrast to his sun-darkened cheeks) and mightily pulled him down into a kiss. At first he resisted—such silly feminine desires were clearly not to be indulged, not by a whore who had so blatantly lured him here for one thing, and one thing alone! But I saw, in profile, Elisabeth open her eyes as she pressed her lips passionately to his, and I saw his flutter open in surprise, then slowly grow dull and dreamy as all his volition fled.

  Throughout, his desperate thrusting never ceased, for this transpired in the space of a few seconds.

  “Zsuzsanna!” Elisabeth gasped, in the clear unyielding tone that signalled she would accept no refusal.

  I stepped back towards her and looked down: her glorious hair had been swept up so that it spilled above her onto the stone, encircling her head like a halo—or the pale golden crescent of the half moon. The big tsigani still flailed wildly, his face now pressed into the sweetly scented pillow of hair half an arm’s length above the top of her skull. All the while, she pressed her palms into his chest, easily holding him up. He would have crushed and suffocated a mortal woman.

  “I can’t, Elisabeth. I—I have no heart for this.”

  “I don’t care if you fuck him or not, dearest. But bite him! For me, please!”

  “I have no appetite.…”

  “You needn’t drink! Just bite him—don’t kill him—and let the blood run down upon my face.…”

  With a sigh I obeyed, moving behind her impaler’s sweat-streaming back and bending down to strike the front of his shoulder. At this, he stiffened and emitted a strangled cry of terror and ecstatic release.

  Sweet blood, but I was too grief-stricken, too troubled, too bored with life in this castle, to savour it. I withdrew, unhappily pleased to deny myself, unhappily pleased to suffer at the hands of hunger; and I sat back on my haunches and watched as Elisabeth licked the gypsy’s small, streaming wound and rubbed her cheeks against it as a cat rubs its face against its mistress’ legs.

  “You are mine,” Elisabeth whispered into his ear. “You shall obey Vlad’s orders so long as they do not harm us, but you are mine. And so, after you have taken the prince from this castle, you shall return for us—and you will secretly tell your closest friend, and make him swear that if you should mysteriously die, he must come and rescue us poor, helpless women. All within a day.…”

  Within a day. And now that the time is almost here, I think, Will they really come?

  But there were further signs to convince me that Vlad would indeed be soon gone. For within a matter of days, he had stolen all of Harker’s papers and clothes—this we learned when we paid our customary morning visit to the guest chambers. These forays have become most enlightening now that Harker carefully transcribes the bizarre scribblings of his diary into English on separate parchment. He has written the entire journal out for us, and I know it will serve us well in England, for it is laden with the consummate details befitting a lawyer’s diary.

  “He shall be our spy in London,” Elisabeth told me that day, “and before Vlad rises, I shall do a private ritual to ensure that Mr. Harker survives long enough to be of service to us. But first, a more pragmatic bit of protection.…”

  As she spoke, she moved to the night-stand and picked up a crucifix lying there, or rather the gold chain attached to it, and let it dangle in front of her face.

  I confessed I gasped aloud, for I had been quite aware of its presence all along, and rendered ill-at-ease. She saw my discomfort (or rather, frankly, terror)—and laughed, tilting her face skyward whilst bringing the tiny impaled Christ overhead until it rested just above her unmarred, porcelain features.

  “Do not be cruel,” I begged her in a trembling voice, for I was at once on the precipice of weeping. “Do not toy with me so, for I cannot bear it.… You will scar your precious skin!”

  Still she ignored me, laughing, as though holding a red-hot poker above such a perfect and beautiful countenance was delightful sport. I surrendered to tears and covered my eyes.

  And when I looked again, she had pressed the golden cross to her lips and kissed it.

  I screamed, and began to faint; at once, she rushed over and caught me in her arms, saying:

  “My dear, my dear, I did not mean to alarm you so! I merely meant to prove a point. Here.…” She immediately carried me to the sofa and sat beside me, gently patting my cheeks until I at last dared open my eyes.

  She held a closed fist up to my face, then slowly opened it to reveal the crucifix upon her white palm. Again I recoiled and began to cover my face, but she commanded urgently: “Look at me, Zsuzsanna. Look.…”

  I looked. And saw that the flesh beneath the shining golden object was perfect, untouched. Awed, I raised trembling fingers to her ruby mouth and found it entirely unblemished and beautiful.

  But when she clasped my wrist and turned my hand palm-upward, intent on handing me the cross, I cried out again. “I can’t! It will burn me.… I know, because it has happened.”

  “Zsuzsanna.” Her tone grew stern. “It’s like the sunlight. It can only hurt you if you are afraid of it. These are Vlad’s fears, not your own; why have you carried them so long?” And, too swiftly for me to resist, she pushed the object into my outstretched palm and curled my fingers tight about it.

  I was too startled to scream, to react—to do anything, really, except gape at the gleaming image in my hand. And a few seconds after, the revela
tion came: The cross was cold and sharp in my palm, but it did not burn my skin, nor did its presence evoke the expected agony.

  “You see?” Elisabeth said, smiling again. “It is a bit of metal, nothing more. But Vlad does not believe that; and so, let us employ his superstitions against him. Go on, Zsuzsanna … put it round Mr. Harker’s sleepy little head.”

  I did so, marvelling at my own imperviousness, my own power.

  “And now, dear Jonathan,” Elisabeth intoned softly at the snoring solicitor, “you are to wear this necklace wherever you go, and if the chain should break, you must always carry the cross upon your person. If Vlad—the count”—and here she glanced at me, grinning at her intentional repetition of Harker’s misinformation—“should threaten, shove this pendant in his face.”

  Thus did Mr. Harker become our agent.

  A fortnight later, the tsigani contingent returned with great wagons, and the pattern of Vlad’s scheme more clearly emerged. There can be no question: He is indeed abandoning this place, if not forever, then for a very long time. At that time, Elisabeth’s gypsy lover returned—but their second meeting was limited to travel arrangements, both ours and Vlad’s. He is taking the safest way for him—boat—but we are not so constrained, and will be waiting for him when he finally arrives.

  When I saw the big uncovered wagons, each large enough to hold several caskets of earth (another of Vlad’s ridiculous superstitions, to believe that he cannot leave Transylvania without taking a bit of it with him), my anger at being abandoned again flared, and I begged Elisabeth to do everything in her power to destroy him now. She insisted that such an effort would most likely fail at this time (what is she not telling me now in order to spare me worry?); nevertheless she would try, by recruiting our Englishman to attempt the deed.

  And this she did, sending Mr. Harker on a diurnal mission to kill Vlad (which he very nearly did)—but the fool quailed.